I visited University of Toronto (U of T), Toronto, Canada, for four months from January 4th, 2017, with financial support from ArCS’ Program for Overseas Visits by Young Researchers. My research focuses on Stratospheric Sudden Warming, a dynamical phenomenon which occurs in the Arctic stratosphere in winter. Prof. Paul Kushner, my supervisor at U of T, is a well-known researcher in my area. I greatly appreciate this program which gave me an opportunity to do research with him and hope this program will be widely known and used by students and young researchers.
After I arrived at U of T, I first presented my previous work about an influence of Arctic sea-ice reduction on atmospheric circulation at a meeting of Prof. Kushner’s research group. Members in this group were working on researches in the fields of, for example, atmospheric general circulation and climate dynamics including Arctic climate change. Thus, I could discuss actively during the presentation and it continued during my whole stay.
Toronto is the most populated city in Canada, a large proportion of those inhabitants are immigrants from various countries. This allowed me to enjoy different kinds of cuisines such as Greek, Iranian and Brazilian, all of which are rarely seen in Japan.
I found a bunch of Japanese (sushi) restaurants in the city, in line with a recent interest in Japanese cuisine in Canada. However, in most cases what they mean by “sushi” is California rolls, which are adjusted to fit the taste of Western people. My friend often asked me which “sushi” I liked, but I explained every time that they are different from what we eat in Japan.
As mentioned above, my stay was entirely prolific in terms of both my research activity and private life. Regarding my research, I will continue to discuss with Prof. Kushner and do research about the results and ideas we got during the stay.
Kazuhira Hoshi (Niigata University)
Group lunch
